Was Half-Life meant to be some kind of landmark?

[Rooster Cogburn]

To really appreciate an innovation, you have to live without it. Being relatively new to the scene, you never lived in a world without Half Life, which is why statements like this:

But it's not like it was the first game to do first-person exploration with plenty of story. Normality, Under a Killing Moon... Myst. Just because it had guns doesn't make it anything special.

Make sense to you.

 

[Mordekaien]

Well, for one it tried something new. I mean, the first 30 minutes were spent without guns, in a big complex, left for you to explore (to a degree). That itself was huge, since FPS genre of that time (and even som shooters today) consisted of, as many have pointed out, putting as many bullets into hordes of enemies until everything in the room stops moving. Then get a key to open another room. Rinse and repeat till you end the level.
The story came in manual, and wasn't put up for you in the game.
For example, Quake 1 had story dumber than most bad action movies.

All these inovations may seem small, but in those days, they were mindblowing.

And this is coming from someone who doesn't actually like the series that much.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

What many have said before me about storytelling and AI certainly holds true. But it is so much more then that. The level design was also ground breaking for its' time, while it is kind of unimpressive today it was a huge step forward from the arena like environments of Quake and Doom and Black Mesa was well-designed enough to pass for an actual covert science facility. It was the innovative puzzles and interesting set pieces (everyone who played HL on release should realize what I mean just by saying "Blast Pit") that made you stop and actually think about what you were supposed to do.

All things combined is what really makes Half-Life stand out though. Half-Life ended up being more then just the sum of it parts. It was the good graphics, the superb audio, the excellent AI, the well-crafted setting, the puzzles and the set pieces that all combined together made sure that Half-Life redefined the FPS genre as we know it. On top of that it also had great modding tools, which in turn helped shape a whole generation of multiplayer gamers (Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat just being the two most prominent, with mods like Action Half-Life and Natural Selection showing just how versatile the game engine was).

I am not a big Half-Life fan, but I was around for its' release and I remember the impact it made. The mark it left in the gaming industry can't be denied and you just have to look at the games it competed with to realize just how utterly groundbreaking it was. The only other game of that generation that had anywhere near the same vision was Trespasser, a game that turned out to be way too ambitious for its' own time and budget constraints.

 

[Monster_user]

"Ocarina of Time sucks",...

You did not just say Ocarina of Time sucks. Half-Life may a landmark game of sorts, but in the end it is just another game.

Ocarina of Time on the other hand is THE GREATEST GAME OF ALL TIME! This game has been number one on so many lists, lists that include Half-Life. Every time it is pit against this "Half-Life", it beats it. OoT is the pinnacle of adventure games! Simple fun mechanics, an EPIC story, a wide range of tactics, and weapons. Plenty of fun side-quests, some of which provide an entirely different game altogether (fishing, bowling, mask salesman). Only the Mass Effect series has come close to dethroning the greatness that is "The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time".

Just look at these lists!

Ocarina of Time #1, Half-Life #43 - VGChartz
http://www.vgchartz.com/article/3742/the-vgc-top-100-best-games-of-all-time-10-1/

Ocarina of Time #2, Half-Life #22 - IGN
http://top100.ign.com/2005/001-010.html

Zelda OoT #11, Half-Life #16 - G4
http://maryland.247sports.com/Board/56/Top-100-Video-Games-of-All-Time-G4s-list-and-show-10098782/1

Zelda #1, Half-Life not on the list (HL2 and Counter-Strike made the list though)
http://www.edge-online.com/features/100-best-games-play-today/11/

Need I say more?

On Topic: My point is, Half-Life may not hold up well, but is was a game changer. I remember the demo I played being amazing at the time, and I already owned Goldeneye for the N64. Day of Defeat was awesome back in the day, as there weren't many WW2 multiplayer shooters at the time. Alas, I missed out on Half-Life, and before long Deus Ex was all anybody ever talked about.

 

[AlbertoDeSanta]

Having never really being an FPS fan myself, I picked up The Orange Box on Steam a few months ago. However, I wasn't expecting the awe inspiring masterpiece that I got. It was so Brilliant. I, personally, can see why it is heralded as the defining FPS game. The level design was excellent and it didn't feel linear, when by all definitions it was. It's considered the redefining of the FPS genre because, as many have said, it did what the others didn't do. It was experimental and different, something that we unfortunately lack today.

Another thing that made Half-Life 2 great for me was the musical score. Excellent music that was used at just the right time; never early, never late.

 

[shrekfan246]

Having never really being an FPS fan myself, I picked up The Orange Box on Steam a few months ago. However, I wasn't expecting the awe inspiring masterpiece that I got. It was so Brilliant. I, personally, can see why it is heralded as the defining FPS game. The level design was excellent and it didn't feel linear, when by all definitions it was. It's considered the redefining of the FPS genre because, as many have said, it did what the others didn't do. It was experimental and different, something that we unfortunately lack today.

Another thing that made Half-Life 2 great for me was the musical score. Excellent music that was used at just the right time; never early, never late.

I'm pretty sure the OP meant... the first Half-Life... not the second one.

OT: Everyone else has already really answered it... and honestly OP, if you're not a huge FPS fan to begin with, you probably won't really notice most of the subtle differences. If you're going into Half-Life with the mentality of "Gimme all the guns so I can shoot things!" you're going to miss what made it different from Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein. Before Half-Life, shooters pretty much were all about getting guns and killing things. Then Half-Life burst onto the scene and basically said "Screw that, we can have connected levels all interwoven by a story, too! Why should RPGs have all the fun?" They kept the story-telling very minimalistic, yes, but it was still directly there in the game, with you, as opposed to dumping exposition in your lap as context at the very beginning or forcing you to read the manual for some sort of context.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

I don't know, since I'm not much of a shooter fan I guess I see them as games where you pick up a gun, shoot stuff and move on.

That's like saying all you do with a computer is click on things and push buttons. It's true, but there is meaning behind those clicks and button pushes. The things that distinguish one computer from another may be inconsequential to you if you don't appreciate what they mean. No offense, but maybe you aren't in a position to be judging what shooters are good shooters. You don't seem to understand shooters or want to.

 

[tautologico]

I played Wolfenstein and Doom when they came out. I loved Doom, spent hours searching for secrets, discovered all secret levels, finished the game in the hardest settings, and so on. It was great to just go around killing stuff and occasionally having a scare from a "monster closet".

I remember vividly the first time I played Half-Life. I spent a lot of time looking around the lab, hearing people talk, and opening the lockers. This was a kind of world-building that I had never experienced before in a shooter. Then I finally went to set up the experiment, and the resonance-cascade happened. It was amazing. There was a sense of urgency to get out of the facility, a real fear of getting killed, and the helplessness of being without a gun while an alien invasion was apparently happening. As the story goes on (if you pay attention to it), you always know the objective behind the things you're doing. This culminates in going to Xen, and while yes, some jump puzzles there aren't the greatest, I still felt the thrill of going to the alien world from where all these aliens were coming from. And the ending was so good in context, especially if you had noticed the GMan appearing in the weirdest places before.

On the whole, as someone else said it, it was about immersion in a world, coupled with the shooting and good level design, that made Half-Life so different from the competition. It does have its flaws in pacing and level design at some points, but the whole is great fun and was positively groundbreaking at the time.

Except for the very bad graphics (pity it came out exactly in the transition to full 3d so it has all these horrible low-poly models), I still think it's a good game. I often go back and replay games I thought were really really good back then to see if they still hold up to the memories, and many don't, but I still thought Half-Life was thoroughly enjoyable.

 

[Jfswift]

I think what set Half Life apart from other fps's of its era were it's rpg elements. You could walk around the lab at the beginning and interact with people. It helped establish, atmosphere. Now it's more common to see this, with examples being like Gears of War and Mass Effect, which although offering varying amounts of rpg elements still establish setting. Before all that you had games like Doom where you were thrown into the mix with only your imagination as a guide.

 

[NLS]

ALso, the level design made sense. It wasn't like in Doom for instance, where you would find a perfectly symmetrical map, where suddenly out of nowhere demons would spawn in all four corners at the same time. Or like in Wolfenstein, where one map was just a bunch of swastikas stacked on top of eachother. In Half Life, you were walking around in a living and breathing facility. Just the intro itself shows you how much effort has been put into making a believable place that actually exists in the in-game world.

 

[generals3]

Innovative... maybe in some aspects, but rather it is a landmark in craftsmanship.

The first Half-Life proved that FPS games can come with a worthwhile story/world, while all the brethren were merely looking for the best adrenaline rush.

And then the second upped the ante, story got heavier, added mystery, some meaty characters, gameplay ranging from excitement, horror, puzzles, play time, lot's of enemy variation, lot's of locale variation,... they just opted to put things together well.

I'm confused. MGS1 was released in the same year as half life and i don't think anyone would claim MGS1 didn't have a story. So why is HL1 praised as some kind of unique golden egg while even for its time it wasn't that special? May have been better than the average shooter but i remember going "bleh" after playing the demo and never going back.
I mean, i get the fandom, i just don't get the whole "Valve is a God and HL is Jesus" part.

 

[Bagged Milk]

It appears you have Pokemon Syndrome. You aren't a fan of the FPS genre, so you think that everything in it is the same. I call it this because in games like Pokemon, people who are not fans of the games look at it and say that every iteration is the exact same, while those who are will fight tooth and nail to prove you otherwise.

Really, the only cure for this syndrome is to familiarize yourself with first person shooters and understand the differences between the ones that appear to be similar.

Half Life was revolutionary, but many others pointed out why. So I won't bore you by repeating what everyone else has said.

Edit:

Snippy snip!

I'm confused. MGS1 was released in the same year as half life and i don't think anyone would claim MGS1 didn't have a story. So why is HL1 praised as some kind of unique golden egg while even for its time it wasn't that special? May have been better than the average shooter but i remember going "bleh" after playing the demo and never going back.

I haven't played any MGS game, so I may be wrong. Most of what I know is from what others have said about it.

MGS told you the story. In Half Life, although linear, we were shown what was going on and we had to piece together what exactly happened. MGS told you who you are, who was the bad guys, and what you are there for. Half Life just said "you're going to your work, but uh oh, crazy stuff is going down." For example, [slight spoilers for Half Life] there's a part where you go through a place with cages full of the aliens, rather than having the game say "hey, the scientists already knew that there were aliens and they were performing tests on them", you had to deduce that.
I'm sure that someone is going to prove me wrong or something, but I dunno, I'm tired.

Edit again:
Ugh, the very next post explained what I tried to say in a two sentences.

3. It had a narrative that did not use cut scenes that took control from the player. All narrative was done in the game, most of it wordlessly. That was a first for the genre.

 

[90sgamer]

I wasn't really into gaming at the time Half-Life came out, or at least the type of gaming that Half-Life falls into, so I wasn't able to anticipate or ascertain its effect on the gaming world. But whenever I see the game discussed anywhere today, it's always talked about, if implicitly, as something to be highly revered, something legendary, and Valve as some kind of Gods responsible for a monumental and holy Creation. Even Yahtzee hails it, and that's not something to be taken lightly.

I'd like to know why that is. I figure if everyone else sees Gordon Freeman's face as the Jesus of gaming then I might as well read the bible too.

Was it because it was innovative? When I first played the game around a year ago it just seemed to me like a regular first-person shooter. I'm not an expert on shooters being an adventure affectionado, but I've played a few pre-1998 shooters and they did not seem all that different from Half-Life.

Was it because it was outstanding in some way? Again, I don't have strong feelings for or against the game, but despite being a good game it didn't seem to excel in any particular department. It had good graphics, a strong story, as decent gameplay as a shooter can be, but nothing exceptional.

I don't know. As I said, shooters aren't my mainstay so don't shoot me down (ha) for this thread, I'm just genuinely curious why Half-Life is to be respected so much.

In penitence,
BBB.

Below is my understanding but I may be missing things, my memory being what it is.

Half-Life did things that no other FPS had done before it.
1. Puzzels. Most first person shooter puzzles involved finding keys to doors. Half-life didn't have a single key. It's puzzels were more like what you'd find on a platform game.
2. No levels. Half-Life was the first FPS to do away with individual levels (i.e. DOOM, Quake, etc.) Individual "maps" were linked together. The absence of a loading screen between maps made the world appear unbroken and undivided.
3. It had a narrative that did not use cut scenes that took control from the player. All narrative was done in the game, most of it wordlessly. That was a first for the genre.
4. It was exceptionally well done in all the areas where it did not pioneer a new concept.

 

[DoomyMcDoom]

Innovative... maybe in some aspects, but rather it is a landmark in craftsmanship.

The first Half-Life proved that FPS games can come with a worthwhile story/world, while all the brethren were merely looking for the best adrenaline rush.

And then the second upped the ante, story got heavier, added mystery, some meaty characters, gameplay ranging from excitement, horror, puzzles, play time, lot's of enemy variation, lot's of locale variation,... they just opted to put things together well.

I'm confused. MGS1 was released in the same year as half life and i don't think anyone would claim MGS1 didn't have a story. So why is HL1 praised as some kind of unique golden egg while even for its time it wasn't that special? May have been better than the average shooter but i remember going "bleh" after playing the demo and never going back.

The difference is in the excecution, in MGS1(which unless I'm going nutters, was a third person game not an FPS, but I'll just go with it) the story was all about the exposition fed to you as you progressed, in Half Life, you were never Told Things so that you now know what's going on, the story is the world, you are in it, and it's all around you... That's the main thing about the halflife series that does set it apart from a lot of other series, the "narration" is practically nonexistant, the games are pretty well the embodiment of environmental storytelling, which is rare as fuck, and was pretty well nonexistant prior to Halflife.

 

[neonsword13-ops]

Ocarina of Time on the other hand is THE GREATEST GAME OF ALL TIME!

That title belongs to Persona 4.

OT: Although I have never played it, I still know how big it's impact on gaming was. It seamlessly blended story and gameplay together. You could very well call it the god of the FPS genre.

It's what all games aspire to be some day.

 

[Laughing Man]

My take on it, since I was heavily in to FPS at the time the concept was simple.

Your basic FPS of the day involved you as super dude A, plonked in to a situation that involved you shooting everything on a non descript level, the only cerebral element was having to find a red key to open a red door or a green key to open a green door and once you completed a level you were magically whisked to the next level which may or may not have looked liked a direct continuation.

Of the few that did use any level of story or continuity between levels you would complete a level and then be given a briefing before being moved to the next level which again would often be totally different to the level you just left.

Half Life on the other hand stuck you in a slower story driven scenario in which you started at point A within this huge facility and then via the story you were forced to escape and try and help or resolve what was going on. No levels, no pre mission briefing you started on a tram way at the start of what was a normal day and then ended up on some alien world killing a rather crap alien boss 10 hours later, and each step of the way was logical and delivered via the story, no magic green keys to open a green door but rather a probem you had to solve, like this alien is blocking your path do this section to reactivate the test bed jet engine and burn the crap out of it to progress.

Then you can also add the fact that the AI displayed a certain level of intelligence, yeah dumb by even FEAR's standards (FEAR still has some of the best AI) but until that enemy AI had basically consisted of big bad, shoots loads of crap at you and you strafe left and right while shooting back.

In all honesty HL hasn't aged well, even Black Mesa is a bit rubbish compared to the likes of Borderlands 2 but at the time it just didn't do one or two things a bit different from the norm it did a lot different it deserves the praise it gets but you also have to realise that it hasn't aged terribly well, I would never recommend anyone play HL now, even if they hadn't.

 

[DarkTenka]

Was it innovative? .. yes, it was the first FPS to discard complex maze-like level design and instead focus on story/immersion. Was it a good game? .. sure, it was pretty ground breaking for its time, ironically .. it was something new!

Did it impact gaming? .. yes, and negetively. It was so successful that from then on this was considered the "format to copy" by every other FPS game made between then and now. Even Doom 3 copied it!

So if you are ever frustrated over why there are so many simplistic linear FPS, you can blame Half Life..

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

Innovative... maybe in some aspects, but rather it is a landmark in craftsmanship.

The first Half-Life proved that FPS games can come with a worthwhile story/world, while all the brethren were merely looking for the best adrenaline rush.

And then the second upped the ante, story got heavier, added mystery, some meaty characters, gameplay ranging from excitement, horror, puzzles, play time, lot's of enemy variation, lot's of locale variation,... they just opted to put things together well.

I'm confused. MGS1 was released in the same year as half life and i don't think anyone would claim MGS1 didn't have a story. So why is HL1 praised as some kind of unique golden egg while even for its time it wasn't that special?

Because no one is praising Half Life for having a story. They are praising it for the way the gameplay was used to support the story and vice versa. A bunch of cutscenes that might as well have been in a separate universe from the disconnected gameplay sections a la MGS1 is exactly what Half Life rescued us from.

That's not to say cutscenes are bad, but Half Life showed us that is not the limit of 3D storytelling. A good analogy would be 3D films. They only have 3D to have 3D, the 3D isn't really used to do or convey anything except how 3D it is. That is true even of something like Avatar. The film that tells a story in 3D that couldn't be conveyed the same way in 2D will be the next Half Life.

May have been better than the average shooter but i remember going "bleh" after playing the demo and never going back.
I mean, i get the fandom, i just don't get the whole "Valve is a God and HL is Jesus" part.

That's not so much a VALVe thing as a fanboy thing.